Spending programs for scientific research: what is the fiscal conservative's viewpoint?

Question

I think that most fiscal conservatives value spending on scientific research when the potential outcome may be the elimination of debilitating illness and injuries, thus promoting cost savings on social spending for treatment of permanently disabled citizens. What is your opinion? Should spending on research be cherry picked based strictly upon the social conservate, Christian fundamentalist viewpoint? Isnt this type of fundamentalist archane thinking what resulted in the dark ages?

Answer 1

How about this, private funding first until findings prove that there is actual progress that can be made with that form of research.

Answer 2

First of all scientific research has been proven to be more efficient when the government is not involved. If the scientific research involves anything to do with defense then I am for the government taking part and using tax dollars for it. Medical research on the other hand should not be funded by the government. Private companies have done it for decades without the government's dirty hands involved. I think the feds should give tax breaks to medical research companies if their research is based on sound scientific data. But in no circumstances should the feds be in charge of medical research at tax payers expense. That is unconstitutional in my book.

Oh, I am a Christian and have no problem with stem cell research at all. The only reason we opposed it when it came up in the elections is because we don't want the government's hands in it. Many Christians have been mislead in the whole stem cell research category and may oppose it for some other reason, but again they are confused by misleading info from someone with a political agenda. Sad.
If you were told that the government was going to use your tax dollars to pay women to have abortions to have stem cells to research you would have apprehensions as well. It is ashamed some church leaders are actually using this lie to further their own agendas. Sad, sad, sad.

Answer 3

The United States has voted, collected or begged money for scientific research for the most pressing reasons, so far. From the atomic bomb to HIV the congressional in fighting never stops but, ultimately the grants are made.

I'm not aware of any funded programs that were dictated by secular movements nor would I approve. The moral majority obviously has a voice but so does the rest of the American public.

Continuing to elect life long career politicians is the only draw back to the value of spending on scientific research.
No matter fiscal conservative or spend thrift liberal.

Answer 4

A true conservative does not believe in spending federal (tax payer) money on scientific research. It should be left entirely to the private sector (except extreme cases of war, like the Manhattan project). A true conservative does not believe in social spending at all.

Social spending is economically bad policy (as evidenced by FDR's "New Deal" keeping us in depression for 8 YEARS), and it is immoral. Stealing from one citizen (taxes) to give to another citizen is wrong, no matter the intentions. We must help our fellow citizen when they are in need. But doing that by stealing from another citizen is wrong.

The private sector can and will fix all things. The ONLY reason politicians get involved is to bribe people to vote for them. For example: if a community pays $1000 in taxes, a politician will give $500 back to the same community and say "look how great I am, I gave you $500, vot for me!" Social spending is a scam, it's bad economically, and it's bad morally. All people should oppose it, not just conservatives.

Answer 5

Overblown hyperventilation. "Dark ages", my âss.

I suppose you think the Tuskeegee experiment was scientific progress? Or the experiments of Dr. Mengele? They DID give us information we'd never had otherwise had, so it MUST have been the right thing, no?

The fact is that right now, ebryonic stem cells are decades away from having any impact on treatment of diseases, unlike the rest of the stem cell research. And Bush WAS the first president to fund stem cell research, including existing lines of ESCR.

Your belief in some mythical fundamentalist bogeyman stopping all human progress is kind of sad.

Answer 6

If the research has to do with the defense of our country, OK, because that is a primary duty of the government, and can't really be done in the private sector. But any research for other scientific reasons that have the potential for turning a profit, such as drugs, commercial space exploration, etc., should be funded privately. If the research has a potential for success, it should have no trouble finding someone willing to put funding into it. If it can't find private funding, then it is probably a waste of money anyway. Besides, if taxes were lower due to less government spending, there would be a larger supply of cash to invest in research.
And that way, you wouldn't be funding projects that a lot of tax payers find morally offensive. (except for the far left, who seem to object to us defending ourselves)

Answer 7

as a fiscal conservative I think your basis of thought is flawed again. We are not against working to find cures. we are against the govt taking our money and then deciding what that money should be used for. We believe the private sector is better and handeling these type of things. Just look at the facts. How many sound business decisions has the US govt made and implemented using tax payers money compared to the bad ones? examples, Social Security, wellfair, school system, etc. we just dont trust the govt to use our money wisely so we would rather give it to the groups that spend everything we give them on something we think is worth wild. This is why fiscal conservatives on national avg give more than non conservatives privately.

This isnt arcane, this is sound business. deploy your money on things that are worth wild and not just throwing money to just be throwing money.

Answer 8

Fiscal conservatives are all about NOT spending on anything you can mention, because largely the only thing they care about is the taxes they pay.

You can try to make an argument about spending to save spending, but they won't buy into that mumbo-jumbo.

You might get them to support military spending. Anything else? Forget about it.

Answer 9

We would disagree.

Fiscal conservative? You might want to check out what that means.

You attack social conservatism for our "arcane" viewpoint. You are apparently unaware of the Constitutional definitions of liberal and conservative.

Conservatives are Constitutionalists who do not believe in furthering or hampering business. Call it what you will, but scientific technology is business.

The reason this administration has been hated by traditional conservatives is because of OVER-SPENDING. Choosing to over-spend in another area is still over-spending.